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How to clean your keyboard without breaking it

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Most of us don’t take good care of our keyboards. We eat over them, we spill things onto them, and the worst part of it all—we never clean them. A keyboard remains a sticky, dirty, and gross mess until one of the keys stops working or someone nearby comments on how nasty it is. Fortunately, this cleaning process is not actually that hard to do. Think of it like a thorough dental cleaning, but for your computer. So stop being that person with the messy keyboard. Take charge of your life, and start with a clean keyboard. Here’s how. Shut down your machine It’s always best practice to disconnect your keyboard before you start the disinfecting process. Nobody wants liquid cleaning products near your hard drive when the computer is on. If you have a laptop, that means turning the entire machine off. If you’ve got a desktop computer, you can just disconnect the keyboard from the computer. Shake it out With a good grip, carefully turn your laptop or keyboard completely ...
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FYI: Can Anything Move Faster Than Light?

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Yes, the universe itself will eventually outpace the speed of light. Just how this will happen is a bit complicated, so let's begin at the very beginning: the big bang. Around 14 billion years ago, all matter in the universe was thrown in every direction. That first explosion is still pushing galaxies outward. Scientists know this because of the Doppler effect, among other reasons. The wavelengths of light from other galaxies shift as they move away from us, just as the pitch of an ambulance siren changes as it moves past. Take Hydra, a cluster of galaxies about three billion light years away. Astronomers have measured the distance from the Earth to Hydra by looking at the light coming from the cluster. Through a prism, Hydra's hydrogen looks like four strips of red, blue-green, blue-violet and violet. But during the time it takes Hydra's light to reach us, the bands of color have shifted down toward the red end—the low-energy end—of the spectrum. On their journe...
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You Can Charge Your iPhone 6s Wirelessly, But Is It Worth It?

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September's iPhone 6S release added many features to take on the competition. A 12-megapixel camera, faster fingerprint sensor and 3D Touch impressed during our iPhone 6S review. But what wasn’t included in the body of the now-unbendable Apple phone is a feature found in the latest Samsung Galaxy S6 and other Android devices: wireless charging. Moving power magically between objects without a cord is something many may have encountered in electric toothbrushes. By placing the toothbrush on its stand, energy is transferred from the metal plate to the brush. Similar charging technology can be found in Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4 and Nexus 5. But just because Apple didn’t include it inside the latest iPhone doesn’t mean iOS users don’t have options. After using the Aerelight lamp to charge an iPhone case that supported inductive charging, I was hooked. When sitting at my desk, picking up my phone for use and setting it down to charge without wires ...
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I hardly ever use my Nima allergen sensor. I’m still glad I bought it.

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Prior to the night of August 10, 2017, I harbored an unabashed love for lobster mac and cheese. I realize that undercooked pasta and cheddar sauce are no real place for delicate crustacean meat, but I longed for it anyway—because there’s only one restaurant I know of where I can eat it. Or at least I could, before that evening. It might seem silly, or perhaps pathetic, to mourn the loss of a food love. I realize that. The reason it’s so crushing is that it was completely avoidable. Months earlier, I had tested a spiffy little device called Nima that would have saved me from a deeply unpleasant evening and preserved my lobster mac obsession, and that same company is now releasing a version that could help the roughly three million people with peanut allergies in the U.S. Nima announced their new sensor this morning at the Consumer Electronics Show, an annual tech and gadget convention that the internet will be abuzz about for the entire week. Plenty of the devices release...
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10 easy ways you can tell for yourself that the Earth is not flat

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This story was originally published on Smarter Than That in 2008. We are republishing a lightly edited version on Popular Science in light of recent interest in the subject. Humanity has known Earth is round for a few millenia, and I’ve been meaning to show more methods that prove the world is not flat. I’ve had a few ideas on how to do that, but recently got an interesting incentive, when Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer, wrote about a recently published BBC article about “The Flat Earth” society. (Most recently, rapper B.o.B. went on a Twitter rant on the topic.) Phil claims it’s ridiculous to even bother rebutting the Flat Earth Society—and I tend to agree. But the history of our species’ intellectual pursuit is important and interesting. You don’t need to denounce all science and knowledge and believe in a kooky conspiracy theory to enjoy some historical factoids about humanity’s quest for space. Now that humanity knows quite positively that the Moon is not a piece of cheese o...
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